McCartney posted an open letter to his website today (Nov. 14) assuring Putin that the 28 activists from Greenpeace that were placed in jail last month after they staged a protest at a Russian oil-drilling platform in the Arctic Ocean are neither anti-Russia nor working on behalf of the western governments.

The Night That Changed America: A GRAMMY Salute To The Beatles will be recorded on Jan. 27 (the day after the GRAMMYs), and will be broadcast exactly 50 years to the day, date and time of their Ed Sullivan appearance: Feb. 9 from 8-10 p.m. (EST/PST) on CBS.

Hardcore fans of either band will be at least tangentially aware of many of the points of comparison addressed by McMillian. But the author, who is an expert on American radicalism and has written another ’60s-focused book, Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, tackles one aspect of the Beatles vs. Stones debate you rarely see addressed: their political activism vs. the public’s perception of it.

Beatles fans have been waiting for nearly a decade for a new volume of recordings of the band’s performances on the BBC. Now, the band and their record label is offering fans a sample of those recordings, a week before they’ll hit retailers.

“I thought, ‘If John loved her, there’s got to be something,” he said of Ono, whom he also called a “badass.” “He’s not stupid. It’s like, what are you going to do? Are you going to hold a grudge you never really had?”